


rise and fall

by imagines



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (not graphic), Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lance whump, M/M, ambiguous ending as far as character death, depictions of physical injury, set after s6, shangst exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 21:30:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15300441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagines/pseuds/imagines
Summary: It could have been such a nice planet, Shiro thinks. Breatheable atmosphere, gravity only slightly less than Earth’s and very pleasant to walk in. Blue water, green forests, and some kind of red flower growing in patches anywhere there’s sunlight. Shame about the flying…things.(On an alien planet, Lance gets hurt. Shiro tries to keep him alive long enough to be rescued.)





	rise and fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> Pinch hit for [Rie](http://nooowestayandgetcaught.tumblr.com) for the Shangst Exchange, run by [black-paladin-babes](https://black-paladin-babes.tumblr.com/). <333

The mission should have been easy: get in, get the hostage, get out. Except the hostage was working for Sendak’s faction, and the mission was a trap to shoot them down, and now Shiro and Lance are stranded on a desolate planet with an inoperable Black Lion and no means to call for help. They’ll miss their check-in after another varga, and then the team will know to extract them, but Shiro is starting to wonder if that will be soon enough. They’ve made the desperate but stupid decision to get out of the lion and see if anything can be repaired on the outside, but as it turns out, the planet isn’t desolate enough. Lance hasn’t yet caught sight of what is watching them from across a nearby chasm, and Shiro hopes to keep it that way. With luck, the creatures won’t be able to leap or climb across to reach them. If Shiro can just get them back inside Black, they should be safe. “Let’s go back in,” Shiro suggests, keeping his voice soft and measured.

Lance narrows his eyes. “That is the tone you use when something’s sneaking up on us and you don’t want me to freak out.”

Shiro gives him a minute nod. “You got me. You can look all you want as soon as we’ve got plenty of metal between us and them, okay?”

Lance’s face pales. “Them? As in, more than one?” But he takes small, quiet steps with Shiro, eyes front, until they’re beside the hatch in Black’s belly.

“Don’t worry about it.” Shiro jams the fingers of his new hand into the doors of the hatch and starts working it open. Without power, the mechanics of the door take a lot of force to operate. (Thankfully, Altean tech holds up just as well to everything Shiro asks of it.) He glances over his shoulder and—“Oh, shit,” he whispers. “Lance, get behind me. Now.”

The door isn’t open yet. He can’t get it wide enough in time. He should have left it open when they got out earlier, but then one of these creatures could have gotten inside, and they’d have been worse off than they are now. And things look pretty bad, because the bastards have _wings_ and are soaring across the chasm. There’s more than one, all right. There’s a fucking flock. One of them lets out a snarl, and Shiro sees light glint off—teeth. Teeth _and_ wings. Shiro _hates_ alien planets sometimes.

It could have been such a nice planet, Shiro thinks. Breatheable atmosphere, gravity only slightly less than Earth’s and very pleasant to walk in. Blue water, green forests, and some kind of red flower growing in patches anywhere there’s sunlight. Shame about the flying…things.

The creatures land a few meters away. They appear to be gauging the likelihood of mounting a successful attack. Shiro isn’t a fan of the probability here. “Lance, keep working on the door, will you?”

“You got it.” Lance pulls a dagger from his waist—a birthday gift from Hunk, more valuable to them now than anyone ever anticipated—and wedges it into the gap Shiro made. The metal creaks as he levers it open a few more centimeters, enough to get a good grip with his hands and start pushing.

Shiro lights up his arm: a soft sky-blue color that he vastly prefers. If the creatures are judging the lay of the land, he intends to make himself and Lance look as unlike an easy snack as possible.

One of the creatures lunges, flapping wildly; its jaw clamps shut on Shiro’s white-hot arm. Shiro smells something like spoiled meat. It dies instantly, mouth scorched. But the things are smart, unfortunately, and witnessing the demise of the first brave one, the rest of the flock understands that it will require a group effort to subdue the interlopers. They advance in a tight line, and Shiro can’t spare the time to get a look behind him. “Lance, how’s that door coming?”

“Almost—there—” Lance groans. “Fucking _come on_!” he yells at the hatch.

The things leap at Shiro as one, and he slices into the midst of them, killing several in one sweep of his arm. The creatures have no armor to speak of, and they don’t seem to have brought backup. There’s just…a _lot_ of them. He throws himself at them, dying beasts hurling through the air as he strikes, and he’s got them now, he can take them, he—

Lance screams.

The next few moments seem to pass in slow motion. Shiro kills the one that’s sunk its teeth into Lance’s leg, then puts down the rest of its horrible friends. The hatch he hauls open the rest of the way, shouting in determined fury. When it’s open far enough, he scoops Lance into his arms and tumbles them both inside. There’s no time for gentleness. Some other kind of fiend has appeared across the gorge, bigger than the ones he’s just slain. He doesn’t care to find out if it’s friendly or not. At least the door is a little easier to close from this angle.

He gets Lance laid out on the floor, propping his feet up on a rolled-up emergency blanket. Lance’s skin is ashen, and his pulse beats frantically against Shiro’s fingertips when Shiro touches the clammy skin of his throat. The area surrounding the bite is already turning hot and red. “Shiro, I can’t see,” Lance says, strangely calm. “I’m—everything’s blurry, I can’t—”

Shiro leans close to check his eyes. Lance’s pupils are blown wide. “It’s all right,” Shiro tells him, even though it isn’t, even though Lance is clearly in shock. Not to mention the blurred vision combined with the tremors racking his body suggest there may have been something bad in that creature’s bite. But Shiro has no way to find out whether those things really were venomous, let alone to find an antidote.

“What’s happening to me?” Lance asks.

“Just gotta make it one varga and then they’ll come get us,” Shiro reminds Lance. He can’t think about how they don’t have the castleship, so they don’t have the pods, and they’ll be forced to treat Lance the old-fashioned way and hope he makes it. Shiro’s already rummaging in the field trauma kit stashed in the wall locker. He snatches up gloves, gauze, and a packet of cream Allura had said was to help with bleeding, and hurries back to Lance’s side. But Lance’s eyes are closed now. Shiro pats his shoulder, then shakes him. “Lance? _Lance_!”

“Huh? Wha? Shiro? What happened?”

Shiro’s heart is about to beat right out of his chest. “Stay with me, buddy,” he says. “Keep your eyes open. You scared me there.”

“Hurts,” Lance moans. “Why’s it—my leg feels like it’s on _fire_.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Shiro mumurs. “This might hurt too but I have to do it.” He pulls on the gloves and presses the gauze to Lance’s wound and pushes down hard, and another scream tears out of Lance’s throat. “Sorry, sorry,” Shiro repeats, hating this, hating himself for having to hurt Lance worse. “I have to stop this bleeding.”

“It’s okay,” Lance gasps. “Wouldn’t wanna die on you. Already did that once. Not a fan. Do what you gotta do.”

Lance is too weak even to move, so at least Shiro doesn’t have to hold him down. He lifts the gauze when blood soaks through. The bleeding has slowed, thankfully, so he’s able to apply the cream to the wound, trying not to listen to Lance’s shrieks as Shiro works it into his torn, swollen flesh. Once he manages to stop the bleeding, he wraps Lance’s leg in a bandage and pulls another blanket over him, then lies down on the floor next to him. Lance grabs for his hand, and Shiro lets him squeeze until it feels like the bones in Shiro’s hand will crack. “We’re going to get out of here,” he assures Lance, trying to believe it himself. “Nice to have time to catch up, isn’t it?”

Lance manages a pained laugh. “Guess the universe decided to force us to stop and smell the roses. Thanks for saving my life, by the way.”

If Shiro had come on this mission alone, Lance wouldn’t be lying here bloody and probably poisoned. So it’s because of Shiro Lance even needed saving in the first place, and—

“Shiro,” Lance says. “This isn’t your fault. You were always supposed to have a partner on this mission. I wanted to come with you, remember? I volunteered.”

“I’m supposed to keep you safe. I put you in danger.”

“If I could get up, I would kick your ass right now.” Lance glares at him. “I put my own damn self in danger, just like all of us do every day. We keep _each other_ safe, Shiro. So, _like I said_ , thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” Shiro mutters. Lance loves to make himself tough to argue with.

Lance gets more and more tired as time wears on, and he speaks less often, but he always answers whenever Shiro asks him if he’s doing okay. “What would you do if I weren’t?” Lance asks at one point.

Shiro’s stomach drops at the implication. “Are you not?” he asks, a note of panic creeping into his voice.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Lance mumbles. “Was just curious.” But he doesn’t sound fine.

Ten doboshes left until the check-in, followed by an unknown stretch of time while the team searches for them. “I’d keep trying to save you,” he says. He slides the fingers of his free hand over the inside of Lance’s wrist. Lance’s pulse is still rapid, but it’s weaker now.

Lance lets his head fall sideways against Shiro’s shoulder. “I meant to tell you sooner—your hair looks beautiful. You look beautiful. You always have.”

Shiro starts to say _thank you_ , but that doesn’t seem right for the gravity of their situation. “You’re beautiful too,” he says instead, and the smile on Lance’s face is the best thing Shiro’s seen all day.

At three doboshes remaining, Lance shuts his eyes and stops responding to Shiro entirely. Shiro watches his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, counting down the ticks.

There’s a thunderous _boom_ outside, and when he looks out the viewport, there are the other four lions, their paladins already running toward the Black Lion. They’re safe. They’re saved.

He hopes.

 


End file.
